Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World

“Fort McMurray is an anomaly in North America. Located six hundred miles north of the U.S. border and six hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle, the city is an island of industry in an ocean of trees.”

The text introduces Fort McMurray, the site of the fire. Its description as an island of industry in a forest of trees highlights the irony inherent in its essentially contradictory nature, which ultimately led to its destruction.

“If all of Alberta’s pipelines were lined up end to end, they would span the gap between Fort McMurray and the moon, with enough leftover to wrap the equator.”

Several statements in the book convey the staggering scale of Alberta’s oil operations, including this one, which notes that the pipelines could reach the moon. Additionally, the text notes that the oil fields are visible from space.

“Corporations and wildfires follow similar growth patterns in that, once they reach a certain size, they are able to dictate their own terms across a landscape—even if it destroys the very ecosystem that enabled them to grow so powerful in the first place.”

This passage draws a parallel between capitalism and wildfires, a metaphor that the text returns to several times. This comparison showcases the essentially destructive, exploitative nature of both forces.

“A fire’s beginning is always humble, and any future beyond the uncertain present is dependent on a tripod of factors over which—at first, anyway—a fire has no control: heat, fuel, and oxygen. These are the ingredients of fire, but a fourth ingredient—a catalyst—is needed to unite these disparate elements into a dynamic, unified whole.”

This quote distills the overwhelming nature of a fire to its essential parts. The full passage compares a wildfire to any smaller flame, like a candle or campfire, helping convey the factors that dictate any fire’s behavior.

“Fire might not be alive or conscious in the sense that we are, and yet its behavior manifests a vitality, flexibility, and ambition often associated with intelligent animals.”

This is one of many quotes in which personification depicts fire. It casts fire as an almost conscious adversary and even as a relative of humanity in its desire to consume and reproduce.

“To remain cohesive under pressure, communities need trustworthy authority figures capable of leading by example and exhorting others to manage their thoughts and feelings, especially doubt and fear. But there is a fine line between hope and denial and delusion.”

This passage notes the necessary task of leadership: keeping people calm while telling them the truth. Darby Allen and other officials initially failed in this task because they lacked imagination or precedents in conceiving of the fire. They presumed that the fire would behave like past fires had behaved.

“A warm southeasterly wind then lifted that flame from its forest bed and, like a generous host with his hand on your back, urged that young fire to dine at will, with infinite appetite, upon the most abundant and explosive carbon buffet on Earth.”

The text again uses personification to describe fire. Referring to the Chisholm fire, this metaphorical image implies a warm, symbiotic relationship between the wind, the flame, and the abundant fuel of the boreal forest.

“The fires she knew—that most people in Fort McMurray knew—were brown or gray, and always in the distance. This fire was none of those things; it was too big, too black, too red, too close.”

Most Fort McMurray citizens had a calm attitude toward the fire. Living in a wildfire area like Alberta had made them complacent about smoke and flame on the horizon, and they trusted their leaders to handle the problem.

“Because these operations are so large and complex, and because they involve such volatile and toxic substances, such extraordinary sums of money, and so much manpower, interruptions of any kind—personal or mechanical—have serious, potentially career-ending consequences.”

This passage points out the irony of oil operations, which exist to serve humanity yet ultimately sacrifice human safety in order to protect their profits and stock prices. This illustrates the destructive, consumptive nature of capitalism, aligning it with fire.

“There was an inescapable irony in Ayearst’s dilemma: that same combustive energy that thrilled, empowered, and enriched them was now manifesting itself in the most primal, potent, and destructive way imaginable.”

This quote showcases the book’s extensive use of irony. The ways that the citizens used fire to make their lives easier and more prosperous are set against the backdrop of a wildfire destroying all these combustion-based machines.

“It is hard to overstate the totality of the disorientation people were experiencing: the roar and crackle of the fire; the wind, searingly hot and alive with sparks and ash; the black and acrid smoke that stole breath and reduced visibility to a car length; the flames a hundred feet high across a front that seemed to have no end or edge. It was as if the world had been remade in fire, and now it was coming for Beacon Hill.”

Vivid imagery conveys the frightening world of a whole town ablaze. The evacuees were forced to witness their entire world become fire, ironically as a natural but devastating result of their abundant use of fire in their daily lives. This quote thematically alludes to The Role of Humans in Natural Disasters.

“Fort McMurray was now operating under different laws than the subarctic world around it. The city and the surrounding landscape had become something akin to a fire planet—not a biome but a ‘pyrome’ whose purpose was not to support life but to enable combustion.”

This quote underscores Vaillant’s creativity in inventing new terms for the strange new world in which the town’s citizens found themselves. Thematically supporting The Impact of Climate Change on Human Communities, this passage notes how in the Petrocene Age, biomes dried and heated by climate change no longer support life but only fire.

“With the forest already primed to burn, a pyroCb, combined with wind-driven embers and lightning, changed this fire from a localized conflagration into a perpetual motion machine of destruction operating on a regional scale. Given the long-term forecast, this fire could burn as long as fuel held out, and, in these conditions, the boreal forest was nothing but fuel.”

This passage describes the wildfire’s terrifying destructive power. It not only decimated its surroundings but also generated new weather patterns that were destructive in their own right.

“The men and women receiving these evacuees became the accidental recipients of countless stories of panicked escape. Through their doors, and through their eyes, passed thousands of faces altered by terror, grief, and loss, and those expressions became theirs too.”

Thematically reflecting Resilience and Creativity in the Face of Disaster, despite the devastation the evacuees experienced, human compassion helped them to survive and rebuild. Hastily repurposed buildings housed them, and people donated supplies. Evacuees’ firsthand descriptions of their experiences were real to their hosts in ways that no news story could ever be.

“It was an unusual way to talk about a chemical reaction, and it was at this point that the fire, four days old and growing exponentially, completed its transformation from an objective hazard to an independent entity with ambitions of its own. Allen wasn’t being fanciful; this was how it felt to be in the fire’s presence—a hungry and motivated adversary intent on maximum mayhem.”

The firefighters personified the fire as an enemy intent on destruction. It appeared to be alive and angry, and it behaved in a monstrous way, leading them to treat it like a conscious adversary.

“What makes a beast a beast in our minds is repetition: in each case, real or imagined, these beings appear repeatedly, impacting different people and places in the larger community. This is standard behavior for monsters, but atypical of fires, and this, even more than its size, speed, and ferocity, is what set this fire apart: the way it persisted—for days—much as monsters do in the stories we tell about them.”

The text draws a parallel between the fire and mythical monsters. It specifies, however, that a monster is a persistent threat, not a one-time tragedy.

“Despite the fact that we are protected by a formidable combination of ozone, gravity, solar radiation, magnetic fields, and life-enabling gases, our atmospheric ‘living room’ remains as fragile as a fish bowl—and as easily contaminated.”

This quote restates the essential thesis of climate science: Human actions have effects on the environment that will impact humans themselves. The atmosphere’s robust structure, which allows life to survive on Earth, is not robust enough to survive industrial contamination.

“Forty years on, the API’s decision to turn its back on a century of solid climate science is proving to be the most consequential policy reversal in the history of human civilization.”

This passage points out the oil industry’s self-defeating decision to downplay climate change instead of adapting oil operations to it. This decision had huge ramifications for the rest of humanity and, in the Fort McMurray fire, for the industry itself, again highlighting The Role of Humans in Natural Disasters.

“It is alarming to consider that this annihilating energy came out of thin air, born of fire and fanned by an increasingly common combination of triple-digit heat, single-digit humidity, high fuel loads, dying trees, and the confusion of battling winds that swirl daily through the mountains and valleys of the North American West.”

The text emphasizes the fire’s frightening nature. It appeared to emerge out of nowhere to wreak destruction. This phenomenon actually resulted from the confluence of many different factors that may be invisible but absolutely exist.

“In the end, the geologic record will show that it is we who served fire, who enabled it to burn more broadly and brightly than it ever has before. Fire, thus far, has mastered us.”

The essential irony of the Petrocene Age is that humans enable fire. Through using fire, humans have become its most effective ally in burning unchecked.

“Hope was hard to come by in June 2016, but it was there, in the kindness and compassion many people were shown, and also in the lawns and gardens. Deep beneath the ash and tackifier, the growing impulse prevailed.”

The text thematically emphasizes Resilience and Creativity in the Face of Disaster. Although evacuees’ homes were leveled and their possessions vaporized, they continued to rebuild their community.

“Fire has no heart, no soul, and no concern for the damage it does, or who it harms. Its focus is solely on sustaining itself and spreading as broadly as possible, wherever possible. In this way, fire resembles the unspoken priorities of most commercial industries, corporate boards and shareholders, and, more broadly, the colonial impulse.”

This passage draws another parallel between fire and capitalism, this time driving the point home as clearly as possible. Capitalism and fire share an overwhelming tendency to consume and grow at all costs.

“Many of those who stayed and fought for Fort McMurray suffer from persistent respiratory problems, and are resigned to the fact that prolonged exposure to the fire’s unrelentingly toxic air has shortened their lives.”

The text notes the far-reaching consequences of the disaster. The fire will have serious health implications for Fort McMurray’s citizens, particularly the first responders, for the rest of their lives.